Coup plot Briton faces Guinea jail

By David Blair in Johannesburg

12:01AM BST 21 May 2005

Simon Mann, the former SAS officer accused of planning a failed coup in west Africa, faced the revenge of his alleged target yesterday when Equatorial Guinea's regime formally applied for his extradition.

If this succeeds, Mann will leave Zimbabwe, where he is serving a reduced, four year sentence in relatively benign conditions, for Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea.

Here, Amnesty International says that prisoners are in danger of starving to death. They survive on daily rations recently reduced from a cup of rice to one or two bread rolls. Since February, inmates at Black Beach have routinely gone without food for up to six days at a time.

But Zimbabwe said there was no legal barrier to extraditing Mann, an Old Etonian and former member of the SAS.

"The process of extradition follows set procedures in domestic and international law and if it follows those procedures, it is possible in this case. In principle, it can be done," said Sobuza Gula-Ndebele, Zimbabwe's attorney general.

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Mann, who holds British and South African citizenship, was arrested at Harare airport last March, along with 69 other alleged mercenaries. The men were on board a Boeing 727, supposedly bound for Equatorial Guinea where they would have overthrown the oil-rich dictatorship of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

Mann, 51, was convicted for trying to buy "weapons of war" and consigned to Chikurubi maximum security jail outside Harare. But he has been spared the worst of African prison life.

Mann inhabits a single cell and his lawyers have been allowed to supply him with books and food during their unrestricted visits.

Zimbabwe knocked three years off his initial, seven-year sentence. The other alleged mercenaries arrested with Mann were released last week after being convicted of lesser offences.

Equatorial Guinea, by contrast, conducted a sweep of its capital, Malabo, and rounded up 14 men, all South Africans or Armenians. They were convicted for being the alleged coup's advance party of mercenaries. Nick du Toit, a former soldier in South Africa's special forces, received a 34-year sentence on the strength of confessions which he says were extracted under torture.

He is now in Black Beach prison where, if the extradition succeeds, Mann will join him. Last month, Amnesty protested about the treatment of Black Beach's inmates. "Many are extremely weak because of torture or ill-treatment and because of chronic illnesses," said Kolawole Olaniyan, the director of Amnesty's Africa programme. "Unless immediate action is taken, many of those detained there will die."

Zimbabwe has no formal extradition treaty with Equatorial Guinea. But Mr Gula-Ndebele said it was on a list of "designated countries" to which Zimbabwe was willing to transfer prisoners. Equatorial Guinea was added last year, within weeks of Mann's arrest.